Stirring Up The Comrades

By Richard Zoglin

The taping was only 20 minutes old, and Phil Donahue was agitated. Not because of a raging controversy over abortion or the death penalty; the trouble with this particular show, featuring a studio audience of Moscow teenagers, was the absence of any controversy at all. "You are like sheep," Donahue goaded at one point. "Are we going to spend the entire program listening to you tell ((Americans)) how wonderful everything is here?" Replied one youth: "What can we do if everything is all right? Do you want us to create problems?"

The discussion soon livened up, however, as students grabbed for the microphone to voice opinions on everything from religion to the nuclear arms race. The encounter was one of several that Donahue moderated during a ten-day visit to the Soviet Union, a trip that provided material for four segments of his syndicated talk show airing this week. Though Donahue is not the first TV host to broadcast from the U.S.S.R. (the Today show's Bryant Gumbel, for example, spent a week there in 1984), he and his crew were given the most unfettered access to average Soviet citizens since Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or openness, took hold. Studio audiences were chosen at random by Donahue staffers (accompanied by a Soviet escort) from grocery stores, movie houses, skating ponds and other locations around Moscow, and no restrictions were placed on the questions asked. Donahue also became the first Western journalist to visit Chernobyl since the nuclear accident there last spring. His crew got footage of the crippled reactor No. 4, as well as of a still deserted village that was evacuated immediately after the disaster.

Donahue was well known to Soviet TV audiences even before last month's visit. His two so-called Citizens' Summits -- satellite-linked question-answer sessions between studio audiences in the U.S. and Soviet Union, co-moderated by Donahue and Soviet Journalist Vladimir Pozner -- were telecast in the U.S.S.R. last year, as was a Donahue segment featuring Houston Biomedical Researcher Arnold Lockshin and his family, who defected to the Soviet Union last October. But Donahue's aggressive, confrontational interviewing style seemed to confuse and anger many Soviets, who saw it as evidence of hostility.

In his Moscow sessions, Donahue toned down his act a bit, though he had to work hard to loosen up audiences (wired with earphones to provide simultaneous translations) who were clearly unaccustomed to American-style TV free-for- alls. In the program on family life, for example, Donahue asked a studio full of married couples their opinions on birth control and abortion. The response was almost total silence. A show with some 350 teenagers, however, was considerably more animated, as Donahue hopped about in sweater and jeans and a Soviet rock band provided musical interludes.

The teens (a somewhat unrepresentative group, heavily sprinkled with students from two of Moscow's most prestigious high schools) offered fervent criticism of the U.S. for its arms policy and its stereotyped view of the Soviet Union and its people. At the same time, there were pleas for friendship and trust. Said one student who is about to go into the army: "I guarantee to you that I will not invade your country." While most expressed support for the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, one student admitted he would not want to fight there: "I'm ready to die for my homeland; I'm not ready to die for others." Donahue, meanwhile, acted as defender of the American system without jingoistic excess. When one youth claimed that all U.S. policy is dictated by the "military-industrial complex," Donahue shot back, "You have just as narrow a vision of us, if you hold that view, as you accuse us of having about you."

Planning for the Soviet visit began last March. Gosteleradio, the Soviet agency in charge of TV and radio, offered to split the costs. The show's producers declined, but did agree to use Soviet TV crews. Donahue is sensitive to criticism that he might have been manipulated by the Soviets for propaganda purposes. "They had an agenda," he admits, "but I don't think they used me in any way that was different from the way that we might want to show off our best side to a Soviet television crew."

This week's programs also include a follow-up session with participants in last year's Citizens' Summits, a magazine-style segment showing Donahue's visit to Chernobyl and other Soviet locales, and a satellite-linked discussion between American reporters in Moscow and Soviet reporters in New York, being taped this week. But potentially the most controversial show had to be scuttled after negotiations broke down. Donahue had originally planned to air a debate between 100 Jewish dissidents and another group of 100 Jews who are satisfied with life in the Soviet Union. After both sides balked at a joint appearance, plans were made to tape each group separately. Then the Soviets demanded that the number of participants be reduced. Finally, the refuseniks backed out, afraid of being used for propaganda purposes. As a last resort, Donahue tried to interview a large group of refuseniks away from government studios, but could not find a room big enough for taping the show; even the U.S. embassy turned them down.

The collapse of the refuseniks program was a "major disappointment," Donahue said later. Still, he was predictably enthusiastic about his venture into East-West relations. "Most of us agreed, throughout the week, that we get far too little information about them and they get far too little information about us," he said. "If we can sell them Pepsi, we certainly ought to be able to talk to them." The Soviets seem to agree: they are planning to air the Donahue programs on Soviet television soon.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow and William Tynan/New York